Conservative(s) for Hillary
by Ryan Sager
Tue, 1 May 2007 at 12:47 PM
updated Tue, 1 May 2007 at 12:50 PM
I'm guessing this won't start a trend: Conservative columnist Bruce Bartlett endorses Hillary Clinton for president. How's that now?
Well, it's pretty simple, really. Mr. Bartlett estimates that no Republican can win in 2008. Therefore, conservatives should start thinking immediately about which Democrat constitutes the least-bad alternative. And that's a pretty simple calculation for Mr. Bartlett: Mrs. Clinton will be just as good a conservative as her husband was.
While this argument is tempting, there are a few reasons it's (mostly) wrong...
First off, the argument that a Republican can't win in 2008 is way off base. Even in the terrible shape the party is in right now, the Republican candidates still do pretty well in general election trial heats. I don't think a far-right candidate like Mitt Romney can win. And I don't think John McCain can win, tied as tightly as he is to the Iraq war. But I think Rudy Giuliani or Fred Thompson would stand good chances, both. And a critical mass of conservatives should be able to find either of them acceptable.
As for the analysis of Mrs. Clinton as the best conservative candidate, Mr. Bartlett does have some good points. First of all, she's refused to pander excessively to her party's dovish base. I think we can safely assume a Clinton administration would be the least timid about the use of force, out of the three Democrats. And Mr. Bartlett makes some good points on Clintonomics:
On economics, it is reasonable to assume that Sen. Clinton's policies would not be altogether different from Bill Clinton's. This is not a bad thing. On trade, his record was outstanding, and on the budget was far better than George W. Bush's. While Clinton raised taxes in 1993, it should be remembered that he cut them in 1997, including a cut in the capital gains tax. On regulatory policy, Clinton was no worse than the current administration and probably better on net.
Democrats know all this, which is why our most liberal pundits, like Bob Kuttner, are attacking Sen. Clinton for being a clone of her husband on economics and criticizing her support for "Rubinomics," named after former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin. Its essential elements are a commitment to deficit reduction and globalization — which are both anathema to the Democratic party's liberal base. It wants a hard line against imports to save jobs and an expansive fiscal policy to pay for a wide range of new social programs.
Conservatives ought not forget that the Clinton years were a much greater triumph for conservatism than the Bush years (which Mr. Bartlett and I would agree — and we have the matching books to prove it — have been a disaster).
The Clinton years saw NAFTA adopted, welfare reform passed, and the growth of the size of government held to a bare minimum.
The question, however, in evaluating Mr. Bartlett's argument for supporting Mrs. Clinton's candidacy in 2008, is how much of this would have been true had the Clinton administration not been forced to govern along with a Republican Congress. A second Clinton presidency, as in 1992, would likely come to power holding the White House and Congress. But no one should count on Congress flipping again, two years in, as it did in 1994.
What would a Clinton administration look like without the restraint of a Republican Congress? Well, there was the crime bill. There was Joycelyn Elders. And, of course, there was HillaryCare (she's more than ready for another go at that one). This could be a very economically and socially liberal administration run by a skilled and experienced political team.
Now, Mr. Bartlett would probably counter that Barack Obama and John Edwards would be worse — and they would be, at least as far as their policy positions. But maybe the difference isn't that great. And maybe a less-experienced president would be easier to obstruct from the minority.
In the end, though, conservatives should probably keep their eye on actually trying to win. Divided government is better than Republican or Democratic government when it comes to keeping down the size of the state. And the GOP has a much better shot at the White House in 2008 than at Congress.
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